I can't tell you how many cookie bag closing devices I've seen over the years. A few of them I've bought, but frankly I never really use them. Why not? Well, most of the time when I'm eating cookies out of the bag, I'm not at home, where all of my cookie clips can be found. At home, I generally put my cookies in containers or my cookie jar. The video above is going to make traveling, and eating cookies a whole lot better.

According to Boing Boing, the website where I found this ad, these candies are real. I'll be honest, it looks like some kind of weird joke at first. If you take the time to read the text, you'll realize that this is more about asserting women's rights, and less about candy. I can tell all you ladies out there that it won't work, I myself have "balls", and I can assure you that I have no courage at all.

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

This is the kind of things that if given to me as a gift I might tear up a bit when I open it up and realize what it is. It's pretty much a culmination of two of my favorite things, candy and Star Wars. The problem is, I'm not sure how much my number one love, Allison, would agree to the idea of a giant Yoda holding a candy bowl sitting in our living room.

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

With spring just around the corner, my thoughts go to nature waking up and springing (pun intended) into action. I think about the bears waking up after a winters hibernation, and I think about how cool it would be to eat a gummy bear the size of a real bear... I may have gotten off topic there a little.

Monday, February 24, 2014

Well today is a day of good and bad news for me. First the good news, it appears that team Canada has won the gold medals in hockey, and placed third in overall medals. I'm a proud Canadian, so it brings a twinge of pride to me, and also makes me crave Tim Hortons for some reason. Sadly however my week is, and probably won't be perfect.

I had grand plans this week, it was to be a week of writing, posting, and general candy fun times. Then it hit me... a cold. I'm presently wrapped up in a blanket playing games on my tablet and napping a lot. When this sort of thing happens, my weekly candy review update (that was posted this morning) comes from a collection of candy reviews that I keep on hand. That's right, I have reviewed several treats in advance, just in case I'm unable to write a review on (or close to) Monday. Now I'm going to go back to bed with a warm cup of chicken noodle soup.

Don't worry about me being sick, I'll still be posting regularly this week. I can't foresee any bonus articles this week, unless I discover an amazing cure for the cold in candy form. Having said that, if any candy companies out there have said cure, sending it to me now will guarantee many posts extolling the virtues of your amazing cure for the cold candy.

While admittedly this review is not the best example of a great cranberry treat, I feel that cranberry as a flavour is lacking in the candy industry. It's a great juice to use for sweet treats because the tartness of the cranberry can work so well with sweet things. I think brands like Jolly Rancher and Lifesaver could really expand on the cranberry flavour and make it work really well. I also think that cranberry juice would work very well with chocolate, maybe in some kind of cranberry cream in the middle of a chocolate. This is really a unique flavour that needs more attention.

I think this is a selling feature for candy that hasn't come up in a while, sick of jerks, have a chocolate bar to take the edge off. It's a pretty good philosophy if you ask me. It would also make for a good signal to the jerks wasting your time. Imagine being at a meeting at work, you're giving your presentation, and when you look out at your audience you see every single one of them eating a chocolate bar. That's your cue to wrap it up.

I'm not really sure what a white cat has to do with fruit flavoured snacks. I've owned several cats in my day, and none of them have been particularly partial to fruit. I've never owned a white cat, so maybe they enjoy a banana now and then. I'll have to check YouTube for "white cat eating fruit" to see if it's true...

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

The flavours and flavour combinations that we find in candy is something that's very close to many of us. Most of us started eating candy as children, so the flavours, smells and textures were implanted into our memory at a young age. Science has proven that flavours, smells and textures stay in our minds, and are directly associated with our brains memories. This means that you'll probably remember the smell of your 5th birthday, long before you remember who actually attended. Because candy plays with these senses in particular, we remember candy well, and often very fondly.

We build a certain bond between these foods we've grown up with, and our place in the world. Since humans are often self-centred, we also assume that everybody else will also have these same bonds. The truth is, many people don't have the same connection to certain foods as you. This means that people from certain cultures may have never had contact with a particular food that you love, and when they try it, they can only rely on the actual flavour in relation to their experiences.

This brings me to the best example of this that I can think of, peanut butter. In North America we put peanut butter on everything. Chocolate and peanut butter, peanut butter and jam, I've even had peanut butter on a hamburger. In Europe however, many people don't eat peanut butter. In fact I know several people who've never even tried it in their entire lives. I also know a few people that have tried it, and absolutely hate it. So why would you hate peanut butter?

I think the answer can only come about when you look at peanut butter from a neutral standpoint. The texture of peanut butter is the first thing that turns people off; it sticks to your mouth, and is difficult to eat. Peanut butter is also very oily, and many people don't like oily food. Finally, peanut butter tastes like peanuts, and while many people enjoy peanuts, not everybody likes to mix it with so many other foods.

Don't get me wrong, North America isn't the only peanut loving continent, many Asian countries use peanuts and peanut butter for a great deal of their cooking. Have you ever had a peanut Thai sauce, often peanut butter. Many North Americans I know can't imagine someone not wanting to eat peanut butter, but then my Japanese friends can’t understand why everybody doesn't like red bean past either.

Every single time I play Cut the Rope, my mouth starts to water. Something about watching that little creature eat the candies is strangely appetizing. The problem is, after about 20 minutes of playing I start to think that he's had enough. Then I think about how sick I would be if I ate that much candy, then I get a little nauseous and I stop playing.

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

This shirt design comes from one of the older looks of candycritic.org. I think it's still pretty cool, and I think it works really well as a t-shirt. I think I may start a line of simple designs for basic treats, see how it works out.

Monday, February 17, 2014

Right off the bat I should tell you that these cookies pictured above have nothing to do with anything we're posting this week. I just got a tin of official Real Madrid cookies from a friend in Spain, so I'm eating them. I'm not writing a review, and after this paragraph you'll probably never hear about them again. I'll hear more about them however because I still have three quarters of the tin to go through.

This week we will be talking about geographical tastes. More to the point, we're going to look at the fact that some foods you think are global hits are in fact only popular in some places. Whenever I travel, I like to visit grocery stores, and in these grocery stores I get an idea about what people like to eat wherever I am. Sometimes it's because I can't find something that I consider a food staple, other times I find a lot of something that I'm not even sure how you would eat it. Generally I tend to buy some local groceries, find myself a kitchen, and experiment.

Lately I've started to keep track of how many reviews I've posted. A few weeks back I did a count and mentioned that I had posted 861 reviews. Well after this morning's new review, we're up to 869 reviews, thanks in part to our Ritter Sport review-a-thon a couple weeks back. I think I'm going to somehow keep up with counting my reviews, maybe on This Week In Candy.

One of the biggest debates in the candy world is about where you get your chocolate. Many people argue that certain bars taste better because they're made somewhere else. While this can be true, it's not always the case. I see so many people who argue that all chocolate bars are better in Europe than they are in North America. This isn't the case all of the time, mostly because many bars you get in North America are actually made in Europe. Importing candy, even chocolate, is fairly easy because of its long shelf life (at least compared to things like fruit and cheese). So unless a bar sells millions of bars in a particular country, there's no reason not to import instead of manufacture. So is this bar better than its North American brother, probably, but that's only because of the cool name on the package.

This might possibly the worst candy science experiment I've ever seen. I'm not against saving your extra Valentine's Day candy to try out a few fun experiments, but I'm not sure chucking them in a fish tank is really teaching you much. Why not set a few on fire, or at the very least figure out why particular candies might float. Most importantly why would you throw chocolates in water, they're so tasty, and you can always share them.

Thursday, February 13, 2014

I love the fact that this Valentine's themed candy ad has some of the best (or cheesiest) slogans for candy ever. "Candy is delicious food", and "candy's dandy keep it handy" are just the kind of advertising you won't really see today. It's too bad that candy has lost some of it's wholesome image, but it's a good thing that candy companies can't advertise themselves as being healthy.

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

I know that it's not Halloween now, but I also know that a bunch of you are really into Adventure Time, so I thought it was OK to talk about this candy corn guy right now. I've seen a few episodes of Adventure Time myself, but I'm guessing that you have to watch a lot of Adventure Time to truly get it. If the opportunity comes up where I'm not writing or taking photographs all day, and I can just sit and watch TV, this is the show to watch.

With all of this love in the air, I thought it would be a good idea to make sure you know the consequences of what can happen with "too much love". Since I'm a candy guy, I thought the best way to share this knowledge was by means of a gummy bear themed t-shirt.

Monday, February 10, 2014

Is Valentine's Day just a holiday made up by greeting card companies? Sure, it's a possibility. The question is, how bad can a made up holiday be if it's all about love? While I agree that spending a bunch of money on things that you'll only want on Valentine's Day is kind of silly, and putting pressure on people to make it a "special" day is also pretty wrong. But if you look at it as a basic idea, it's really nice to have a day that you can sit with that special someone and just remember why you like each other. Or, you can sit with your friends and bitch about why relationships suck, either way it's healthy, I think.

To help celebrate Valentine's Day, all week on Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr we're suggesting some great inexpensive snack related things you can do with that special someone. It just goes to prove that you don't have to spend a fortune to make that special someone happy.

Speaking of social media, if you haven't checked out our new Instagram feed featuring daily candy facts, you're missing out. How else could you learn how to say "donut" in seven different languages?

Of all the holidays that I do special candy reviews for, Valentine's Day is probably one of the most simple. Christmas is challenging because many of the treats are so similar, chocolate Santas, chocolate balls, and chocolate reindeer are often just the same chocolate in different form. Halloween is difficult because not everywhere in the world celebrates Halloween, so if I'm out of North America, I have to improvise. Easter is pretty much the same deal as Christmas, in fact sometimes it's exactly the same chocolate as Christmas with a different wrapper. Valentine's Day, particularly in the last 10 years or so, is different. There seems to be this attempt to make new candy traditions for this holiday, traditions filled with gummies, suckers, and marshmallows.

"Each year millions of gallons of milk, the kind you drink, go into Milky Way candy bars." So what you're saying is that I can eat a Milky Way bar every day, and not a glass of milk?!! See mom, I was right, candy is healthy.

I've been spending the last few days talking about all of the other aspects of these wonderful Ritter Sport bars, but today, I'm just going to talk about sports. I'm a big fan of the Olympics, and even though there's a lot of controversy going on right now, let us not forget about the athletes that have trained their whole lives to get to these games. Tonight I'm going to sit by the television (with friends) and cheer on my fellow Canadians as they walk into the stadium to compete. They say that Canada has good odds at placing in the top 3 countries for medals this year, so GO CANADA GO!!!

You know you've made it as a candy company when you have your own hot air balloon. Companies that are just starting off, trying to make ends meet, don't go out and buy hot air balloons. I'm not saying that it's a bad advertising choice, I'm just saying that it takes some capital to get something like this going. I'd also like to add that if the people from Ritter Sport would like to give me a ride in their hot air balloon, I would graciously accept.

I really wish that I loved marzipan, it's really surprising that I don't. It contains two of my favorite things in the world, almonds and sugar, but for some reason I just can't get into it. As I get on in my years, I have started to tolerate it a little more, but I'm not sure why. It could be that my palette has grown, or it could be that I'm starting to eat higher quality marzipan. But I'm still not a huge fan of the stuff, and if given another option I'll often leave the marzipan behind.

Wednesday, February 05, 2014

You would probably think that a Snicker's bar key chain would be a pretty cool thing to have, and you'd be right. But what if that key chain could also have a flashlight built into it as well? Well my friend, it really seems like this is your lucky day.

I was giving some thought about what country has the best chocolate in the world, and I think Germany would be in the top 10, maybe even the top 5. A big reason for it's high ranking is brands like Ritter Sport. While we all associate fine chocolate with countries like Germany, Belgium, and Switzerland, these countries also offer some really good lower quality stuff as well. I've eaten bars (like the Ritter Sport) that have the quality of the chocolate one would expect in many other countries finest chocolate shops. To qualify as a chocolate super power, you really have to cover the whole range qualities.

With Valentine's Day quickly approaching, you have to be sure to get that special someone the perfect gift. Might I recommend that this perfect gift be accompanied with a cute little candy card. The one above is just a sample of some of the cute candy cards that you can buy from our sister site bewarethecheese.com. You can see the entire collection of candy themed cards right here.

Of the many treats that I've reviewed, from all over the world, Ritter Sport has the most awkward name to say, as a native English speaker. The two words "Ritter" and "Sport" don't roll off the tongue together at all. In fact I always find myself having to think a little harder when I say those two words together. Stranger still is that although it is a German treat, they still use the word "sport", although according to my limited research there is no German word for sport. Although I've also never seen a Ritter Sport bar that uses any kind of translation for the bar anywhere in the world. I wonder if other languages find those two words together awkward to say as well.

Monday, February 03, 2014

This week we're having a fun filled review-a-thon. It's been a while since our last one, so we figured it was about time. This week we're going to taste test a whole slew of Ritter Sport bars. Some of you may not be familiar with them, but in many European countries they're extremely popular. In fact the photo above was taken at the Ritter Sport museum in Berlin Germany. Many people who have tried them, don't always realize how many varieties they come in either. Hopefully this week I'll teach you a little something about this awesome bar, and convince you to sample one of the many varieties available.

A Candy Critic reader Joel has been asking me to return the "Bunny Test" back online for a little while now. This was a little (very poorly made) game I designed a long time ago. It took me a while to dig it out of the archives, but it's back online for all to enjoy.

It's been a long time since our last review-a-thon, but we're back. This week's review-a-thon theme is the Ritter Sport bar. The Ritter Sport bar might be the only chocolate bar in the world that was designed specifically to fit into a pocket. I'm not sure if the size or shape actually improve the bar, but fortunately Ritter Sport bars are often made from very high quality ingredients and are very tasty (that should give you some idea about how these reviews are going to go).